3o8 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
period a duration of at least half a million of years — 
perhaps they may have occupied as much as a million 
and a half. These figures are mere provisional estimates, 
subject to modification as our knowledge increases. 
The numerous changes in climate, of elevation and 
depression of the land, the transformation of our animals, 
the elaboration of human culture, the evolution and 
distribution of human races, all bespeak an enormously 
long period of time. 
To arrive at an estimate of the antiquity of the 
Piltdown remains, we must also allow for the time which 
has elapsed since the Pleistocene period ended and our 
present era began. There is a general agreement that 
about fifteen thousand years would cover this recent 
period ; but it must also be added that Dr Allen Sturge,^ 
from a study of the Neolithic age, which commenced 
soon after the Pleistocene period came to a close, regards 
such" an estimate as totally inadequate. When, therefore, 
Dr Smith Woodward assigns the Piltdown remains to an 
early phase of the Pleistocene epoch, we may, in the 
present state of our knowledge, suppose him to refer 
the Piltdown race to a time which is removed about half 
a million years from the present. Beyond any question, 
the Piltdown skull represents the most ancient human 
remains yet found in England, 
Having thus attempted to give Dr Smith Woodward's 
opinion of the antiquity of the Piltdown remains in terms 
of years, we must again return to the meeting of geologists 
and take up the narrative there. The discoverer of the 
remains, Mr Charles Dawson,^ said " he was quite pre- 
pared, from an anthropological point of view, to accept 
an earlier date for the origin of the human remains, and 
Dr Woodward and he had perhaps erred on the side of 
caution in placing the date as early Pleistocene." In 
Mr Dawson's opinion, then, it is possible that the 
Piltdown race may belong to the period preceding the 
Pleistocene — the Pliocene. Professor Boyd Dawkins said 
' Proc. Prehistoric Society of East Ang/ia, 191 1, vol. i. p. 43. 
2 Quart. Journ. Geol.^ 1913, vol. Ixix. p. 151. 
